


standing by my haunted man (your ghosts have got me too)

by flowers4flowers



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Because I Said So!, F/M, I will personally un-fridge every sw mother because it is an ISSUE, Lyra Erso Lives, guess who's starting another fic before she's finished her first, lyra lives au, this gal!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2019-10-22 17:09:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17666666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowers4flowers/pseuds/flowers4flowers
Summary: don’t look down don’t look down don’t look downHer feet skirt ever so slightly on the railing, and Lyra focuses all of her energy on staying upright. Knuckles white, she glares at the boots just outside the hatch she and Jyn are under, as though she can will them away through sheer force of want.Lyra can recall few other moments in her life that are as blessed as when the Death Troopers at last depart the cave. A small part of her tries to find the joy in a moment like this, but it dies in the back of her throat and leaves a bad taste behind.She gives herself another two minutes to wait at the top of the ladder, and almost slides down the ladder in relief when she knows that she and Jyn have managed to stay hidden well enough to keep their presence on Lah’mu a secret from Krennic.-a Lyra Erso lives au





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As always, any and all mistakes are my own.
> 
> Thank you for reading, enjoy!

The idea to go back for Galen is fully-formed in Lyra’s head before she registers its presence. A small part of her knows that she always planned to do this, was always going to head out with Jyn before going back to stand by her husband’s side. 

He’d looked at her with such sad eyes back in their home, and whatever hardness Lyra had adopted during her life was so quickly swept away and vanished when she looked at him. She couldn’t just _leave_ him–the very thought of that felt like a rejection of everything she considered to be right. From the moment they’d met, what seemed like an age ago now, they’d only ever been apart under extreme duress. To leave him now felt like leaving a sharp, visceral part of herself behind.

The thought of him growing old and weary in the Empire, giving his life to a cause he did not support, dying in its grasp has her vision go red at the corners, her hand diving into her bag to grasp the blaster within.

She tries not to think too hard about the look in Jyn’s eyes when she tells her to go on without her, the confusion that had made its way onto Jyn’s small face. 

But the red that clouded her vision when she first began thinking of her husband begins to creep away the further she walks from Jyn. She doesn’t stop moving, but her steps stutter more than they should, and she wants more than anything to clutch Jyn to her breast and keep her safe from the world. To never have to see fear enter and make a home in her daughter’s eyes.

It’s the thought of Jyn’s eyes that stops Lyra in her tracks; her trek back to where Orson has her husband is momentarily postponed as she thinks about the daughter she has turned her back on. Jyn’s eyes had watered ever so slightly as Lyra knelt before her, but Jyn is like her father in this regard: she will not cry, because she knows her tears will not succeed in changing anything. Lyra smiles thinking of her brave Jyn standing straight despite the weight of the situation crashing down on her young shoulders. She should never have had to go through this, she should have been allowed to grow up on Lah’mu. To feel the rain on her face, to grow with a solid home–like she’d planted her feet in the dirt and sprouted to the sky with arms wide open.

All of that was now gone now that Orson had found them, so easily washed away it was almost like those four years of relative peace had been nothing. _That man can’t seem to stop destroying any semblance of peace we’ve managed to carve out for themselves_ , Lyra notes bitterly. 

_Galen wouldn’t want you to go back, Lyra_ intrudes without a warning, keeping her in place. She’s wasting time just standing here, but her legs are firmly rooted to the ground.

Her immediate reaction is to reach for the kyber at her neck, to feel the comfortable weight of it as it slots into her palm. To ground herself in the Force, the one thing besides her family she trusts with her life.

She realizes with a jolt, hand halfway to her throat, that she left the necklace with Jyn. Her brave, fierce, _scared_ , Stardust. Her Stardust that should be on her way to the cave–Lyra, however, knows Jyn is far too much like her. Jyn will have set off after her, will watch her confront the Death Troopers and the man they follow.

Her Stardust will have to watch, _with Galen’s eyes_ , as her mother puts everything on the line to protect the man she loves. Her initial reaction is to go back to him, to think he needs her more than Jyn does. But that niggling thought at the back of her mind is pervasive, working its way to the front until the only thing she can think about is the daughter she’s just left behind.

A small voice at the back of Lyra’s mind tells her of the sadness that will envelop Jyn if Lyra continues down this path: Jyn will grow alone, will be alone, will be feel abandoned by all those who care for her. How Jyn will grow resentful, will grow with a hurt that cuts so deeply it aches in her chest. 

**She’ll die alone, as alone as she is right now. Staring at the backs of those she loves for the rest of her life–she will never find contentment as long as she chases the faces of those she’s lost** the voice tells her.

_No_ , Lyra thinks, _she still has me_.

The decision sears through her as she realizes that she may never see Galen again, that she hadn’t told him she loved him before she and Jyn had set off into the hills. The last look she has of her husband is of his back, his shoulders tightened and rigid as he stands as the last barrier between his family and the Empire. 

She knows she’ll never forgive herself for leaving him behind, for letting Orson snatch him away, but she cannot face a future for Jyn where the last look her daughter ever has of her parents is them turning away. Jyn will grow up with her mother by her side, bright and brave. Galen would want this for them, even at the cost of his freedom.

_You brave, foolish man. Know that I love you_.

She places her trust in the Force, and turns back to where she left Jyn.

-

She meets Jyn halfway up the path, holding her tightly before ushering her back up the trail. They’ve lost too much time with this back-and-forth, and Lyra knows Orson will remember the presence of a child when they lived in Coruscant. Galen would have told him Lyra had died several years prior, but Orson would latch onto the memory of a small child, and raze the land until he found her.

The thought of Orson Krennic coming anywhere near her daughter pushes Lyra onwards down the trail, working her legs faster to make up for the time she wasted choosing between her husband and her daughter. Whenever Jyn had asked about Papa’s friend who’d visited their Coruscant apartment regularly, Lyra had pushed a “he’s Papa’s colleague” past her teeth. Now, however, she wants to howl into the wind that Orson Krennic is a lying bastard and a coward who thinks he can strong-arm the world into giving him something resembling a sense of achievement. 

“Come Jyn, we’re almost there.”

“Is Papa not coming along? Is he going with the man in white?”

“Yes Jyn, Papa is going with them.”

“You were going after him, weren’t you Mama?”

Lyra does not know how to answer that question, but Jyn’s silent nod up at her is all she needs to know that Jyn gathers enough of an answer from her silence. Jyn stutters slightly in her steps, struggling to keep up with Lyra’s longer strides as they move quickly to the cave tucked just behind the rise up ahead. She forgets on occasion that although Jyn takes after her in appearance and temper, Jyn is still very much her father’s daughter. Her eyes notice so much for one so young, and she places her hand more firmly on Jyn’s back to hide the fact that it’s trembling. 

“I’m with you here now, Jyn, and that’s all that matters.”

-

She ushers Jyn into the bunker first, remaining at the top of the ladder with her blaster dangling at her side. Galen had urgently pressed it into her hand before she had left him for the last time, and she had shoved it deep into her bag as she rushed around their small house trying to remove all evidence of her existence. From almost the instant they had landed on Lah’mu, she and Galen had planned a story that would be told to whoever can sniffing around their farm. It was very rare to have any visitors on this corner of the sparsely inhabited planet, so any lifeforms that came to close to the house only encountered a lonely man trying to scrounge out an existence.

Lyra and Jyn would hide in a small closet off the main sitting room, remaining there for the duration of the stranger’s trespassing on the farm. The idea to create a hiding spot within the planet itself is born from these occurrences.

-

When Lyra pictured herself returning to her work, she never suspected that she’d do so by wandering around Lah’mu looking for a good spot to put in a hatch. But the wind whistling through her hair and the moisture on her face carried her over the rocky and uneven terrain as though the weight of the galaxy wasn’t resting on her shoulders. Taking samples, recording measurements–it’s like stepping back into an old, comfortable skin. When she finds the cave she knows it’s the correct location immediately upon her entering–can feel it in her chest that this is the place to build the hiding spot.

She and Galen, along with a few droids Galen rewired to help, dig deep into Lah’mu’s black earth for weeks after the discovery. 

In all, it took them almost four weeks to get the hatch in perfect condition to fit them when the time came around. Lyra prayed that it never would.

-

Her finger tightens around the trigger when she sees black boots enter the cave, and almost gasps in horror when she realizes she forgot to hide any and all traces of her and Jyn’s boots from the dirt. 

_look down don’t look down don’t look down_

Her feet skirt ever so slightly on the railing, and Lyra focuses all of her energy on staying upright. Knuckles white, she glares at the boots just outside the hatch she and Jyn are under, as though she can will them away through sheer force of want.

Lyra can recall few other moments in her life that are as blessed as when the Death Troopers at last depart the cave. A small part of her tries to find the joy in a moment like this, but it dies in the back of her throat and leaves a bad taste behind.

She gives herself another two minutes to wait at the top of the ladder, and almost slides down the ladder in relief when she knows that she and Jyn have managed to stay hidden well enough to keep their presence on Lah’mu a secret from Krennic.

That brings a slight smile to her mouth, and she feels less weary as she settles herself and Jyn into the long wait for Saw.

-

The small light they have with them sputters in and out, elongating their shadows in the small hole to extreme proportions. Lyra can’t find it in herself to care about the malfunctioning light when Jyn’s taking such a delight in the strange shapes her body is being cast as, and Lyra helps pass the time by making animals and various other creatures with her hands, whispering stories that have Jyn shaking in silent laughter.

They’re in the middle of a truly ridiculous one Lyra applauds herself for coming up with on the spot when she hears a shuffling from outside the cave. Immediately she switches the light off, grips her blaster, and shoves Jyn as far behind her as possible in the cramped space.

The blaster shoots above her head when the hatch springs open, but it’s Saw’s face she sees at the top. Anyone else and she would have opened fire.

A small smile appears at the corner of Saw’s mouth, and his low voice drifts down the ladder towards them. “Lyra, little one. Come, we have a long journey ahead of us!”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, any and all mistakes are my own!

Lyra shears her hair off shortly after they join Saw and his Partisans. It makes it much easier to go unrecognized, which feels strange for something so simple. She regrets it however, when Jyn spots her for the first time without hair, and doesn’t recognize her right away. She doesn’t like the implications of that, that her daughter will at some point look at her and not know who she is; her fear that Jyn will feel alone in the world for even the smallest period of time comes back to haunt her in the oddest ways.

Her fear is alleviated, however, when Jyn cracks a smile so wide it scrunches up her face, and asks to feel Lyra’s now fuzzy head.

“Is this what a Wookie feels like, Mama?” Jyn asks, and she is so genuine in her enthusiasm for Lyra’s newfound fuzziness that Lyra smiles for the first time since Saw retrieved them from the cave.

-

Jyn comes to her with nightmares of a man in white.

“You _fell_ , Mama. You fell, and you didn’t get back up. That man took Papa away, and you wouldn’t get back up Mama.” She’s crying, but no sound comes out of her– the wet tracks streaking her cheeks are the only indication that she’s in distress.

Lyra gathers her as close to her breast as possible, as though the love and affection she wraps around Jyn’s tiny frame is enough to keep the nightmares at bay. She’s not sure who’s trying to gather more strength from this embrace, but she doesn’t relent in the tight grip she has on her daughter.

Both she and Galen had feared the inevitable nightmares that would come to their daughter, nightmares that had plagued them both ever since they abandoned security for freedom. Dreams of having the other taken away, of being torn apart in a violent fashion: Galen had woken in tears shortly after their arrival to Lah’mu, barely able to speak about the dream that had done so to him. They took turns waking each other, holding tight and begging for whoever had had the nightmare to **please wake up, please come back**. The nightmares had subsided over the four years they had spent on Lah’mu, but they still cropped up on occasion, the fear never truly leaving Galen or Lyra.

Lyra had not had dreams truly violent in nature, but her’s had hardly seemed any better. She always was alone, with both Galen and Jyn missing, and her unable to find them. One recurring dream saw her in a crowded square, and one moment she’s holding onto both of them, but the next they’re gone. Every face turns from her, and she gets swept away in a crowd of thousands, none of whom are the ones she wants. When she had slept next to Galen her first action was to reach out for him, to check that he was safe in their bed. Now, she pads over to Jyn’s cot that lies across from hers, and strokes Jyn’s hair until her breathing slows down to a normal pace.

Jyn’s dreams had all been relatively pleasant in nature before that day on Lah’mu, but now nightmares come about more often than Lyra would wish. All she can hope for is that she’ll always be there to bring Jyn back to reality, to hold her close and tell her she is loved and safe. That’s all she can ask for at this point-it’s only a small wish, but it means the world if Jyn does not have to feel frightened past the immediate aftermath of the nightmare.

_Oh Galen, I regret ever believing the nightmares would cease._

-

Shortly after they join up with Saw and his Partisans, the small moon they’re on comes under Imperial attack. Saw loses half of his fighters in the small skirmishes that ensue, and Jyn experiences loss for the first time when some of her favorite playmates do not come back. The first few days Jyn had run to the entrance of the safe house, craning her neck to spot those returning. Lyra tries and fails to erase the image of Jyn's devastation when the ship's ramp lowered and fewer and fewer people disembarked with each passing day. Now Jyn does not react when the telltale whirl of the engines comes nearer, and Lyra's heart aches at the sight. Eventually, it is time to move on, and both Lyra and Saw know that the name Erso cannot leave the moon. Lyra and Jyn are already living anonymously, never revealing to the others their names, but Lyra and Saw are both well aware of the fact that Krennic will keep up the search for them until they are back in his clutches. Therefore, two of the moon’s citizens who perished in the crossfire become Jyn and Lyra Erso. Lyra considers it a small blessing that the security system of the remote Imperial outpost on the moon is so outdated as to make it a relatively easy thing to alter and fix.

This makes it easy to drop the names of Lyra and Jyn Erso in the settling dust, to have them declared dead by the Empire. They adopt the names of Vega and Zeta Hallik, and the name Erso dies with "them" on the moon.

-  
Across the galaxy, Galen Erso is hunched over in the middle of his room. Krennic has just delivered the news that although Jyn and Lyra had made it off of Lah’mu, they had been killed in an ensuing firefight on some distant moon Galen refuses to give a name to. Refuses to give the final resting place of his family a name because it will only mean his anger is being funneled towards it, and not towards the very thing that drove his wife and daughter there in the first place.

Krennic had done all he could, which in the end was not very much, to appear sympathetic to Galen when he broke the news that Galen’s whole reason for going quietly had perished, and had most likely been buried in a mass grave. The Empire has always been efficient in their cleanup. A datapad with their names listed as casualties was all he had of his family now, their names just becoming a cataloged note in the Empire. Orson hadn’t even asked if he wanted to hold onto it, merely extended it along with a “My, sincere, apologies,” before turning on his heel and leaving Galen alone. 

The tears are there, but they do not run as Galen remained prostate in shock. His mind is moving a mile a minute, but at the same time has come to a grinding halt as he tries and refuses to process the information that had been thrown at him by the man he once considered a friend. His hands want to shake, from grief or rage he isn’t sure. Lyra and Jyn, his family, gone. He could say the word a thousand times and it still wouldn’t lose its potency, would still make him want to fly apart at the seams.

A dry, gasping noise brings Galen back into reality, and it takes him several moments to realize that it is him making that sound. He sounds like he’s desperately trying to grasp at air that won’t come, and so he closes his eyes and focuses on evening out his breaths.

Something is niggling at the back of his mind, a plan that he hadn’t dared linger on lest he create more danger for Lyra and Jyn. To even consider the idea had been dangerous, but now Galen Erso is a man with nothing left to lose. He had held back for fear that, if discovered, his plan would only intensify the search for Lyra and Jyn. If they were found now, when he was still loyal to the Empire, he had the assurance of Krennic that they would be reunited with him. Galen knows that he is a fool to believe Krennic so readily, but a fool's hope is better than nothing at all. Now, he has nothing to wish for-the desired reunion has been yanked out of his grasp by the very people he serves under.

With one look at his desk, Galen Erso knows what he has to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this chapter, and thank you for reading!
> 
> As always, comments are appreciated, though never required :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, any and all mistakes are my own.
> 
> Enjoy!

The last time she had smiled fully was when she and Galen had been standing in their home, the morning her life and her husband were ripped from her. She cannot recall for the life of her what had caused the smile, but to have had that moment with Galen before she left him behind is what she has to content herself with.

She smiles less now that she and Jyn are on the run, hopping from moon to planet, never staying in the same place long enough to feel truly comfortable-never having their feet firmly planted on the ground. There’s an itchiness in her skin now that wasn’t there before, and it makes her more wary than she cares to let on. Standing in an open doorway is now fraught with potential-an extended horizon a challenge to her previous stationary way of life. There is no solid base in her life now that she moves around so much, and if the prospect of having no concrete foundation in her life wasn’t a terrifying prospect enough, to not give Jyn something secure almost makes Lyra ache for that dreaded Coruscant apartment.

Lyra had felt so confined in that apartment, so far away from the nature that called to her whenever she was away. To not be able to walk outside and breath the fresh air, to explain to Jyn what flowers grew in which areas of the galaxy, nor study the crystals that had first collided her and Galen-Lyra had felt like a caged animal put on display by the Empire as a model of dutiful obedience. The Empire may have freed her family from Vallt, but all they did afterwards was put them in a new prison, just differently outfitted.

Her interest in the Force became more than a hobby then because she was no longer allowed complete access to her work, and infuriatingly, to her husband. She and Jyn were kept in the apartment for the majority of the hectic Coruscant day for their apparent protection, but Lyra took insult to the fact that the Empire believed she was not capable of reasoning out why she was kept inside and away from her husband and his work. 

When she had first set foot on Lah’mu, she was half-tempted to stretch her arms to the wide sky and yell with all her might. Instead, she had gripped Galen’s hand and let her joy spill out of her in laughter and tears. Sinking down into the wet grass of Lah’mu, Lyra inhaled a deep breath of fresh air, and had smiled so wide it hurt. Maybe, just maybe, they could finally keep a hold onto the peace they had been grasping at for years. 

Now, forever on the run seems to be the only mode of living she'll have for the rest of her life, however long that may be. She had once ached for the nature that became more and more absent during her confinement on Coruscant, but to now have the enjoyment of it stripped away by the more practical need for survival has taken much of her enjoyment of elements away. Everything has become something warped and twisted: what could become a weapon, shelter, food. No longer does nature serve the purpose of fulfilling her curiosity and idolatry; it's now a concept that requires little compassion. 

Her faith in the Force had guided her towards a belief in the intrinsic comfort of the world outside her own, but now she finds it has become harder and harder to reconcile the two as she shows less and less compassion to the planets she journeys to. Although she would never be as in touch with the Force as she wished, she could feel it, and that had been enough to settle her for years. Now, as she breaks down rock and cuts down trees because these are just things she has to do, she yearns to be able to reach out to the Force as a means of finding a peace that has been pushed aside.

She found something resembling that on some quiet moon the Partisans had briefly rested on. A waterfall could be heard from their campsite, and so Jyn was entrusted to Saw’s care, and Lyra set off to find the source of that entrancing sound.

Climbing down a small hill, she was immediately hit by a chill that radiated from behind an obtuse rock formation that jutted out of the hillside. Curving around it, she found herself immediately at the base of a waterfall descending rapidly from several meters above her. A few smaller waterfalls trickled off to the side, totaling in all seven streams of water that crashed among the rocks and logs in the pool before Lyra’s feet. 

The mist washed over her, the thundering of the water hitting the rocks the only noise that came to her ears. It all wrapped around her in a way that made her feel as though this was the one place in the galaxy where she was truly safe-among the green moss and white water she could once again become one with the Force. The edges of her body washed away with the mist, and she felt as though she had become a nebulous body who existed solely to stand there under the mist with the sound of the falls hitting the rocks echoing beautifully in her ears. To stand there forever and be surrounded by the peace the waterfall brought pulled at her with such a strength Lyra half felt she’d fall to her knees.

She lost track of time in that sacred little place, and she pictures it in her mind whenever the distress that has become a constant in her life threatens to drag her back to the mindset that had dominated her in Coruscant.

She had been living with the weight of the Empire pressing in on her family, so a transient life at least gives her the illusion of being more free than she truly was. The waterfall could fill in the places where her outward demeanor cracks, leaving the other Partisans with the allusion of a Lyra Erso that is calm in the face of any obstacle that comes her way.

She could look out the window of the ships they flew in, the beauty of the stars enough to draw her mind away from the very reason she was flying across the galaxy in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Long time, no see. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the update :)
> 
> Like always, comments are appreciated, but never required!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *powerslides in at 10 pm to post this*

Galen Erso may still be alive, but Lyra Erso feels like a widow irregardless. To lose one’s husband to the Empire is one thing, but to have one’s husband forcibly enfolded back into the Empire is an entirely different beast. The remaining Partisans don’t know the whole story, don’t know just who her husband is. All they know is that Vega Hallik and her daughter fled with Saw from an Imperial attack, one in which her husband was reluctantly enlisted by the Empire. The Partisans that had run with Saw when Lyra and Jyn first arrived have either been killed or vanished-no one remains that knows her story is formed on half truths and gentle lies. Her story is close enough to the truth Lyra does not feel regret for lying, and it works better than having to deal with sympathy for a dead spouse-Lyra can handle many things, but sympathy under false pretenses is not one of them. It reminds her too much of the past, of the Empire and its simpering subordinates.

So Galen remains a ghost, unknown to the Partisans, and only mentioned in hushed passing. He’s not a traitor, but he’d hardly be better off in the eyes of the Partisans if they knew. They swear up and down that they would never go with the Empire alive, and Lyra doesn’t bother reminding them of the small human attached to her hip. Love is not something the Partisans factor into their lives-the only thing that comes close is the commitment they have to the cause. 

Their hands no longer know what it feels like to hold a loved one, to press their palm against something that does not wreak havoc wherever it is placed. The cracks that come about from fighting the type of war they do don’t slide across the cracks of another’s hand, molding so that the calluses fit together. Instead, all they do is catch the dust and blood, rub awkwardly against the small handheld bombs and blasters-their minds thinking of a peaceful future their hands have been unable to hold.

Lyra’s hands are no less scarred, but she holds so much more than weaponry in them. She cradles Jyn whenever she seeks out comfort, uses them to patch up wounds (and how cleansing it feels to use her hands to heal instead of hurt). The same hands that can cause so much harm can also carry the hope of a future where the cracks and lines smooth out, where they aren’t joined by new siblings every day as she fights for a future that she dreams is largely unblemished.

She has Jyn to fight for, Jyn and her future. That’s enough.

-

The lines of her body harden the longer their time with the Partisans stretches on. While Lyra would never consider herself much of a rumbler, she knows fully well she can handle herself in a fight. The amount of times she had dreamed of truly decking Orson had been a relaxing fantasy to turn to as their friendship soured. She knew it was possible for her to take him, but then she would have been lost as to what to do next. Now, with Saw’s training, she handles herself very well in a fight with a small contingent of ‘troopers with nothing more than a virbroblade and a blaster at her disposal. She’s become almost skinless, wading into fights unafraid-she sees a reflection of this in Jyn. 

She tries not to think about what Galen would say if he saw who she and Jyn have become-his girls with blasters and truncheons as extensions of their bodies, swirling through street skirmishes like deadly wind storms. 

She and Jyn are ideal for small fights, both of them so diminutive in size that they can snake in and out of crowds with extreme ease. No one suspects a mother and child to cause such damage to Imperial troops, and they operate well off of that assumption.

Lyra tries not to think too hard about the sight of her ten year old taking out Stormtroopers with a blade, scraping the blood off her hands with a disinterested air. The manner is affected, Jyn knowing she won’t gain the respect of the other Partisans if the sight of blood makes her have a visible reaction. 

The first time Jyn had gotten blood on her hands that wasn’t her own, blood she had caused to be spilt, she had stopped fighting in the middle of the square they were in. Blaster bolts whizzed by, but only the rushing of blood in her ears seemed to get through to her. She looked like she’d seen something so dark and deep that she was slowly being pulled in, like a sharp line was tugging her inward at the navel, and it wasn’t until she was knocked to the ground by a fallen Partisan that she snapped back into fighting mode.

She had seemed relatively fine afterwards, shrugging off any and all concern, but that night she came to Lyra’s bunk, and asked to be held by her mother like she had been when she was a child. Jyn was only eleven, but she hadn’t been a child for a very, very long time.

Her tears fell silently, and Lyra started at the realization that she had never noticed when Jyn’s distress became so compartmentalized. Her daughter was packing her emotions away as an inconvenience, and she hadn’t even registered this fact until she had seen the tears welling up and refusing to fall in Jyn’s eyes. 

Lyra wonders how long it has been since she has truly known her daughter. She’s not entirely sure if she ever wants to find out.

-  
Sometimes the need to have Galen by her side becomes so overwhelming Lyra pictures a black wave, swamping her until her body becomes too great a weight to carry around. The ache to hold him creeps into the marrow of her arms, roosts there until her arms throb. She misses him something fierce when it rains on Yavin 4, cradles a pillow to her chest when she misses being able to hold him in her arms at night. Sometimes, if she thinks about it long enough, she can just see his indentation in the empty space of her bed. Can feel the glide of his sleep shirt as he wraps his arms around her, the scrape of his beard as he presses a kiss to her forehead. She falls asleep much faster when she allows herself to think of Galen, but when she wakes up the bed just seems all that much colder, and her arms ache almost imperceptibly more. They ache as though she’s just been put through her paces, but no. All she’s done is wish for her husband.

It's easier to ignore when she's constantly moving, able to outpace the need for her husband simply by never staying still long enough to dwell on it. 

But at night when she lies in her cold, lonely bed, her mind dwells on the man she loves. The distance between them seems insurmountable, and her thoughts cycle through what she would say to him if they ever met again. 

_Why does it hurt so much when you are not with me?_ His analytical mind would ask.

_Because I also know how much it hurts. Because I miss your body when it is with my body. I miss your arms wrapped around me. I miss waking up with you. I miss holding you. I miss being able to love you in person. Come back to me Galen. Come back. Come back to me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> as always, comments are appreciated, though never required.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *power slides in, but this time as a college graduate*

Saw eventually leaves them behind-they’ve become too recognizable, and they’re generating more talk than is wise. They’ve become a danger to themselves, and the threat of becoming a hostage again drives the mutual decision Lyra and Saw come to. Six years of jumping around the stars comes to an end so quickly Lyra would have struggled to remember how much time had actually passed if she didn’t have the scars that marked her body giving her a traceable timekeeper.

He leaves them on the remote desert moon Jedha with enough credits to get by, two blasters and a truncheon, and a contact that helps them get in touch with the rebellion. He grasps Lyra’s shoulder before he walks away, as close to a hug as the man will ever allow himself. 

In the interim between Saw’s final departure and their meetup with the rebellion contact, she and Jyn work odd jobs in and around Jedha City just trying to keep food on the table. After a month of doing odd jobs here and there to feed and shelter themselves, she and Jyn are offered a place to stay in the Temple until their ride arrives to pick them up. She’s not entirely sure how the Guardians are aware of her impending departure, but she’s long since stopped being a woman who looks at a blessing and doubts. The Force is also not giving her any feelings that indicate something is off, so she assumes all is relatively well at the Temple. The Guardians largely keep to themselves, but there are two who keep Jyn busy during the day when Lyra is out finding work. There’s not enough time to learn their names, but they keep Jyn happy and occupied, and that’s enough for her.

Every morning before the sun rises Lyra is out the door, wandering through the streets of the holy city. It’s the quiet of the morning she knows she’ll miss the most about the city, having spent the past six years running around with a small cadre that made enough noise to wake the dead.

When their rebellion contact, a boy barely older than Jyn who does not give them a name, finally shows up, Lyra is almost hesitant to leave the relative peace of the city to forego a headfirst dive into an even more complex and systematic way of life. A rebel base sounds harried even from a distance, and Lyra knows a shock is coming around the corner quicker than she’d like-the Partisans were enough chaos on their own, but an organized chaos on a much larger scale leaves her feeling intimidated.

But she and Jyn need to continue fighting for the cause, so it’s only with one final lingering look back at the holy city that sees Lyra and Jyn Erso board a shuttle headed for the rebel base. 

Apparently their relative ease about joining the rebellion cracks open something in the young boy, as he manages to become slightly more animated on the flight to wherever the rebel base is. Nothing too substantial, but a smile uptick of the corner of his mouth is enough to indicate to Lyra that the boy isn’t so far gone in that rebellion as to completely lose his youth. After watching Jyn gradually become less of a child and more of a soldier before she had even seen a decade of life, it warms Lyra to see the two of them bicker as though the adult responsibilities of the galaxy haven’t been been pressed down on their shoulders.

Jyn pesters him again and again about giving them a name to call him, and after another snappy comment from Jyn about his “tight-assed emotional reticence” the boy finally grounds out a name-Cassian Andor, of Fest. Jyn’s smirk at weasling the answer out of him goes unnoticed by Cassian, but Lyra can’t withhold her bark of laughter at her daughter’s behavior.

-

_Jyn’s delighted shrieks are echoing down the small hallway between her bedroom and theirs-she's obviously found her birthday presents._

_You’re daughter is awake,” Lyra huffs sleepily._

_A short puff of air against her neck is followed by Galen’s typical response: “Before the sun rises she is **your** daughter. You’re the one who always awoke before the sun-she’d never inherit that ungodly trait from **me**.” His arms tighten around her waist, pulling her more firmly against his chest as they wait out Jyn’s penultimate descent upon their bed. _

-

Their welcome is short and succint, and before they know it they've hit the ground running. Jyn and Lyra are just that to their fellow rebels-Jyn and Lyra. Neither wants to give up too much personal information, though Lyra has a sneaking suspicion both Mon Mothma and Draven know exactly who they are. Draven must know, because the man did not climb his way to the position of Head of Intelligence without some practical thinking guiding his way. And Mon Mothma is far too clever to let the minute details pass her by, and she grows in Lyra’s estimation the more they interact. 

Both she and Jyn scoff at the training they’re forced to go through-a month with Saw had given them more training than the Rebellion could give them in seven months. But they both know they’re living off of borrowed empathy, and they don’t want to push their hosts to the point of annoyance.

They see Cassian on occasion around the base, but he’s a rising star in Intelligence, and they’re just two rogues flinging themselves around the base until they find something that sticks. 

Jyn enjoys the spirit of the sparring mats, but after sending many of her opponents to the infirmary her joy in the activity splutters as people actively avoid sparring her. To the people on base it makes little to no sense for an opponent to beat the other into the ground, but none of these people ran with the Partisans. Their safety on base was a relatively secure concept, but there was nothing concrete about the Partisans-never spending enough time staying still and really hashing out their feelings, the only way to truly express oneself was through physical action. So to Lyra and Jyn the absolute annihilation of one’s opponents is a very clear expression of a willingness to fight, and a declaration of the physical endurance that they're able to give. To the rebels, however, Jyn just comes as a hotheaded brute-the only people who seem to tolerate her presence are those who form the fledgling Pathfinder squad. Lyra seems to be an aging bitch who struggles to control her temper. Their combat skills would have been seen as a bonus with the Partisans, and would have been constantly exhibited-in the rebellion, however, those very skills are locked down until absolutely necessary.

So while Lyra and Jyn hiccup their way through some extremely rudimentary training, by their standards, they manage to carve out a very niche spot for themselves in the workflow that is the rebellion. Sitting in the calm of their room at the end of the day becomes a more frequent practice as they both learn to control their own quick bursts of emotion.

Half the time she and Jyn are shuffled around the base, not fully trusted to do any serious work. Jyn’s been scratching at the seams to go out into the field with Cassian, but that’s a moonshot if Lyra’s ever heard one. The boy is too deep in Intelligence for someone like Jyn to have the ability to tag along, but it stings nonetheless whenever Jyn comes back to their room at night, dejected after yet another Command refusal to have her work with Cassian.

-

Every once in awhile she and Jyn simply sit in their bunk and become present again with the Force. Neither of them are sensitive enough to merit training, but they both can reach out just enough to know it’s there. Sometimes premonitions, or gut feelings that feel a bit more substantial than gut feelings come through, but for the majority of the time both Jyn and Lyra can only acknowledge that the Force is there. There’s a comfort in that, when everything else in their life is chaotic. To sit and just feel the edges of the Force brush against them, to feed off of the comfort its presence brings-it’s enough, it will always be enough.

Another unexpected hurdle that catches Lyra offguard is the emotional freedom that comes from settling in a more permanent home. Her feelings don’t have to be continuously tamped down so as not to interfere with her tenuous survival, and so she’s allowed to feel, freely and truly for the first time in a very, very long time. Highs and lows dot her emotional output as she tries to find a balance between emotional constraint, and the freedom to emote without having to worry if that emoting hinders her chances of survival that day. The need to have expression comes back sharply after strict self-suppression, and Lyra feels more emotionally stable in years-the last time she felt this way she and Galen were not yet fully under the thumb of Krennic and the Empire. 

Now that she and Jyn have a home with the rebellion this need comes about more and more, and it’s only those emotionally constrained years with Saw that prevent her from breaking down-acting as a blocking agent to the surging thoughts and feelings that come with a freedom she never thought she’d be able to obtain. If this is what freedom feels like, Lyra would lay her life on the line so that everyone would have it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! as always, comments are appreciated, though never required :)


	6. Chapter 6

Jyn finds her place among the young batch of recruits being molded into a new division of soldiers, tentatively called Pathfinders by those around the base. By taking the best of the recruits and pairing them with the more astute leaders, re: those with the most patience, Jyn and the other recruits slowly begin working up responsibilities both around the base and on small missions they are sent on. Nothing too dangerous to start out with, and while Jyn will swear up and down she doesn’t need him to babysit her and her friends, Cassian goes out with them as a liaison-glorified babysitter to the Pathfinders, many of whom resent someone their own age being put in charge. Someone older would have made for better relations between the rowdy Pathfinders and command, but both Lyra and Jyn are ready to admit that Cassian has every right to keep an eye on a group of his peers.

“Teenagers,” huffs the majority of the older generations on base following a company-wide blowout that sees Cassian walking away from a small contingent of Pathfinders, red in the face. This kind of thing is to be expected when a group of people the same age are forced to both cooperate with and follow orders of a man barely out of their age group. Their remarks have only become more biting and cruel as the months go on, and it seems someone has finally gone too far.

Jyn was among their number, but Lyra does not spy the signature smirk on her face that typically marks Jyn’s amusement. Instead, what Lyra saw was something akin to regret. Regret over what, she wasn’t entirely sure. Lyra knows her daughter, though, and knows Jyn will not let it lie.

The Partisans have never been big on courtesy, or apologies, but Lyra had flat out refused to raise her daughter without the bare modicum of manners. Just because she was growing up in a war does not mean Jyn would not know how to admit she was wrong, and Lyra sees the fruits of her labor come about when Jyn follows after Cassian. Not before whipping around and pinning her fellow soldiers with a glare that would have shrunk even the hardest of men.

When they had moved beyond her field of vision, Lyra turned to the small group of trainees, and lais out what kind of behavior she expects from them. None of them, not even the boldest, can meet her eye for months

"You didn't have to terrify them, mama," Jyn says, but Lyra can sense the satisfaction Jyn feels when the Pathfinders begin to listen to Cassian with only minimal grumbling.

-

Cassian comes back from one mission he can’t speak to them about, and normally Lyra would not press him on it. Cassian, for all she knows he cares about them, is as reticent as a stone when he wants to be. The rebellion comes first in his life, but Lyra worries the effect that kind of devotion can and will have on a boy who’s dedicated every fiber of his being to the cause since he was six years old. Cassian has a purpose now, but Lyra does not know what kind of life he’ll lead once the war eventually came to an end. She just knows it will end someday, and she fully intends for Cassian Andor to see the end result of all his labor. His labor that takes him out on missions to less than savory parts of the galaxy, carrying out plans that leave him quiet and withdrawn upon his return. Draven is strict when it comes to protocol regarding mission confidentiality, and it’s only when he pointedly seeks out Lyra and Jyn to reprimand them for their “incessant prying” into Cassian’s missions that Lyra realizes that looking too hard into what Cassian does for that man would make her skin crawl and cause more trouble than it’s worth. 

But when she walks into a storage closet to get some supplies and sees him curled up in the far corner with his head in his hands she tosses any sense of protocol out the window. Cassian must sense her presence, for he begins speaking without even looking at her.

“No matter how many times I scrub my hands their blood is still there, and I can’t get the sight of their body out of my mind. I see it when I close my eyes, and the fact that I caused tha-” he breaks off, cradling his head in his palms. The shakiness of his shoulders gives away his grief, and Lyra is not one to push. She simply sits down on the floor next to him, leans back against the wall, and lets him know without saying that she does not blame him for what he has been made to do in service of the rebellion. Her presence, she hopes, will be calming enough for him. He’s twenty, she realizes with a start-twenty years old, and with enough blood on his hands he must have a hard time remembering what they look like clean. 

Cassian doesn’t say anything for the longest time, but finally, he bumps his elbow with hers, muttering a quiet “Thank you,” before he’s out the door.

-

When Jyn goes out on her first mission without the Pathfinders, Lyra quarantines herself in the base canteen and gets blisteringly drunk. She knows Jyn will be fine, Cassian is with her and Lyra’s entirely sure Cassian had to pull several strings for that to happen, but that still does not stop the weight that settles in the base of her stomach from twisting into a hard knot that throws her off balance.

She gets looks of sympathy from some of the older rebels, those with children. Most of their children are too young to go out into the field, but they all are more than familiar with the fear a parent has for a child in a warzone. This anxiety is an old friend, follows them from base to base as they fight a war so that their children won’t have to.

Every night Jyn's gone Lyra's lies in bed, pleading with old gods, new gods, the Force, anything that may have a say in her daughter's fate. She drifts off every night pleading with the universe, with Jyn, wherever she is. _Please come back to me Stardust. I’ve lost Galen, I can’t lose you._

They arrive back on time, which is unusual for Jyn since she is never on time for anything, and it’s made even more unusual by the hulking presence of the Imperial droid loitering behind Cassian.

Jyn comes stomping off the ship and towards her, but Cassian doesn’t have that typical constrained look he typically has when they have their usual knockdown-dragout fights. Instead, he looks like he’s barely keeping his amusement in check.

_He’d have a very nice smile if he used it more often_ , but Lyra considers the small tick of the corner of his mouth a small enough victory. Even if the amusement comes at her daughter’s expense.

“Kriffing idiot just _had_ to pick up a death droid while we were out. Complicated my first mission just out of spite.” Jyn spits, stopping in front of Lyra. She huffs her bangs out of her eyes, and shoots a quick glare over her shoulder at the security droid. Or it could be directed at Cassian-Lyra can’t really tell, but at this point it could be directed at either or both.

The security droid tilts its head ever so slightly to the side, and if it had eyebrows, Lyra figures one would be raised in a patronizing fashion.

“Once again Jyn Erso, I will inform you of the likelihood that your mission’s success rate went down upon the introduction of my presence." It pauses, for what Lyra can only assume is dramatic effect. "The margin of change is so small it is unworthy of note. I can repeat this until you have acknowledged your registering of it.”

“The only thing I’ll be doing is sticking a blaster up your-”

“Jyn, maybe if you stop insulting it it might like you better.”

“Mama, I love you, but no.”

Cassian tilts his head back and lets out a loud laugh, and Jyn's look of victory lights up her whole face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> as always, comments are appreciated, though never required :)


	7. Chapter 7

Lyra first suspects Cassian Andor may have feelings for Jyn the first time she watches them spar each other. Jyn knocks him straight on his back, and the boy looks like he’s been hit upside the head and never wants to recover. Like he’s witnessing a supernova in person, and can’t look away for the life of him.

She’d seen that look on Galen too many times to not be familiar with it, and sees her hesitant return of affection in Jyn’s scoff and “What are you looking at?”

She’s pulled back by the thread of a memory to a night when she and Galen had gone for a stroll through the city, and she had danced under the lights, drunk on gin and the man who had held her hand steadfastly all evening. When she stops twirling, her vision blurs with Galen being the only thing in focus. She remembers not minding if what she could see she could see consisted solely of Galen Erso and his small smile as he held out his arms to steady her.

“You glow,” he had told her that night, “You glow from within, like a star.”

Lyra had ducked her head and scoffed to hide the brilliant shade of red her face had turned. “Now you’re just being funny,” she had said to brush off the sudden wave of, of something that came at her. For one so normally confident in herself, Lyra Vegae felt decidedly off-kilter when confronted with the increasingly magnetic orbit that was Galen Erso. An instinct to run far away from this attachment pulled at the back of her arms, as though her subconscious was trying to warn her about whatever it was that might come about. She’d never felt like this before, and Lyra had never been one to feel truly comfortable when faced with the unknown. That’s what she liked about her work so much: crystals had an amazing regularity about them, and she’d begun to them enjoy ever so slightly more after having met Galen through the very act of acting as his guide in a cave system rife with them. 

But when she raised her head and looked Galen in those eyes of his, the only thing that came to her mind was _kriff-I am so gone._ And she couldn’t find it in herself to mind.

She sees the same thing in Cassian’s eyes, if a bit dim. She doesn’t want to push either of them, but by the Force, do those two need someone like each other in their lives. To find a happiness like that in the middle of a warzone is a rare blessing indeed.

-

Despite Lyra’s fervent prayers that Jyn returns to base unscathed after each mission, the inevitable happens, and Jyn is met in the hangar by medical personnel upon debarking. She’s injured, badly so, and Lyra wants to yank out her hair for not being there to protect her. Pushing past personnel who don’t get out of her way fast enough, she latches onto Jyn’s hand with a grip that says she will not move from her daughter’s side, protocol be damned. A reprimand is tossed at her from someone at her back, but it’s quickly cut off by a sharp look from a frantic looking Cassian Andor.

He can barely look her in the eyes, but he latches onto her other hand as Jyn is taken away by the medics. She barely manages a squeeze before she takes off with the medics, Cassian clinging to her hand as they sprint towards the medbay.

Jyn goes into the bacta tank, and Lyra and Cassian are told they will have to wait several hours before she’ll be awake and cognizant. They exchange a look, and silently agree to wait it out, together.

Silence reigns for several cycles before Cassian hesitantly turns towards her and begins to speak.

Cassian tells her in halting sentences about how Jyn came to be this way, but the words don’t seem to be forming the way he wants them to, and Lyra cuts him off before he begins to trail off and openly accuse himself of allowing this to happen. Cassian has a guilty streak a planet high, and if he lingered too long on the cause of Jyn’s injury, it would revert from whoever had actually done her the injury, and transfer to him. Lyra knows him so well as to be able to know that with all his careful planning Cassian would not allow this type of anomaly to come about, and that the blame lies on an anomaly, not on his hunched over shoulders.

He thanks her with a silent nod, and they go back to waiting in silence.

They nearly bowl over the droid that comes to tell them Jyn is awake.

Jyn first meets Lyra's eye, raising her arms in a weak gesture for a hug. Lyra falls on her, clinging Jyn to her as though she'll never let go. She can feel Jyn's tears stain the collar of her shirt, and pulls back to find Jyn trying and failing to hold back tears. Lyra brushes her bangs away, and gently kisses her forehead.

Ever so gently she helps Jyn lie back down, and it is then that her daughter sees who else waits by her bedside.

“Shame on you, Cassian Andor,” Jyn rasps as she lifts a fist to lightly sock him in the arm. “Thinking I wouldn’t come back to you.”

To Lyra it seems that this comes from a conversation previously held between the two, and later that night Kay confirms this when he recounts what all happened to Jyn before they arrived back at the base. Lyra forces herself to sit and listen, her fingers itching for something to break.

A stray blaster shot had hit Jyn square in the chest as they had raced back to the ship, and Kay had carried her all of the way back to the ship. "She threw herself in front of a shot meant for Cassian. It would have killed him." Kay had passed her off to Cassian so that the ship could take off. “His hands were shaking so much it would have been unwise for him to fly,” Kay elaborates. 

She had lay in his arms, Cassian murmuring “Don’t leave me” like a prayer into Jyn’s hair the entire ride back to Yavin. He also had murmured one other thing to her after she passed out, but Kay gives Lyra this information with the caveat that it be kept from Jyn. Both Lyra and Kay had come to the mutual decision that any emotional declarations and or feelings uttered unknowingly between the pair need to be recounted directly by either Jyn or Cassian, not through an intermediary. 

Lyra knows this will most likely happen again-for if she could be certain about anything, it would be that Jyn would not hesitate to plant herself in front of a blaster if it meant saving the life of someone she loved. Jyn would stare them in the face, and whoever dared threaten her family would inevitably have to make the first move. Lyra could see the firm lines of Jyn’s shoulders as she stood as the defense, had seen them mirrored in the last glance she had of her husband, and for once Lyra wished Jyn would not be so like her father. 

Still, the shock of her reality leaves Lyra breathless and staggering towards some semblance of balance. This feels as though it’s happening to someone else, that her Jyn is whole and well in her arms, not lying in the medbay stubbornly holding onto life with both hands. 

-

Rehabilitation is a slow process, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Lyra had to practically hold her back by the scruff of the neck, Jyn would immediately sprint back out into the action. Two months of slowly working up her strength was grueling, both for Jyn and those around her. Jyn had always been antsy, ever since she was young, but the base was confining at the best of times. So while the idea of physically holding her daughter back to prevent her from inevitably winding back up in the same type of situation is one she knows Kay would relish, Lyra would rather not see it in practice.

That still doesn’t stop Kay from picking Jyn up less than two weeks later, and literally carrying her back to the room she and Lyra are sharing.

Lyra’s sitting on her bed, datapad in hand, when muffled scuffling and cursing makes it way through her door towards her. A sharp bang at the bottom of the door was all the warning she had when it slid open to reveal Kay holding Jyn aloft, her arms trapped at her side. Kay must have kicked the door then, and if a droid could look miffed, Kay was very much on his way there.

“Good evening Lyra Erso, I’ve come to deposit your wayward offspring. Please know carrying around subordinates is not in my programming-I would very much not like to repeat this.”

“You won’t be able to do _anything_ you piece of shavit if you don’t put me dow-”

Jyn hits the ground faster than Lyra thought any human had the potential to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> as always, reviews are appreciated, but never required :)


	8. Chapter 8

Mon Mothma calls her in to the briefing room one day, and this is such a rare occurrence Lyra quickly realizes the urgency of the unnamed situation. The room is tense, the few people inside keeping silent.

In as few words as possible, Mothma illustrates the critical need of the rebellion to start looking for a new location for a base. She gives no reason, only asks Lyra to spearhead the initiative. A few planets and moons have been brought into consideration, but no one in the rebellion high command has any idea of how to judge the hospitality of a planet.

Lyra Erso does. _So_ , she thinks, _they've figured out who I am._

“That is where you come in,” Mon Mothma informs Lyra. “You mentioned previously that you had some experience with geological excavations," and Lyra tries and fails to hide her amusement at the faux innocence, "-and we would like to send you with a small team to begin the planning of a new base. It is preferable that you have a team assembled as soon as possible.” Mon Mothma's tone leaves little to no room for argument-Lyra knows she has to end of the day to compile a list.

The tips of her fingers begin to tingle at the thought of getting to go back to work, to do what she has always loved. It’s a heady experience. 

-

She’s on Hoth when everything happens- Jedha, Eadu, Scarif. 

Jyn and Cassian’s whereabouts are not given to her immediately, but Mon Mothma holos her to inform her of her daughter’s hand in retrieving the plans to the weapon her husband designed. 

Galen would never willingly build a machine capable of what Mothma tells her.

Lyra wants to skin Orson alive. 

She takes the rest of the message in silence, keeps to herself after the call drops and she dives back into her work.

She can't think about it, can't think about what it all means for her husband and daughter.

Several of Cassian's friends try to reach her, but communication shuts down shortly after they get in touch with her comm. She wouldn't have had much to tell them anyway, they're Cassian's friends and Jyn's comrades, not hers. But she regrets not giving them some hope, a message of resilience- _"Cassian can make it, so can Jyn. You know this."_

For some reason they're being kept in the dark, as her team comes to her with complaints about the lack of signal. Lyra's skin crawls not knowing what has happened.

She and the rest of her team are not informed of all that’s transpired until the Death Star is hovering above Yavin 4. It’s for their own safety, keeping them grounded to avoid the air space above Yavin 4, but Lyra is not the only one with family still on that moon. Her team tries to exchange looks of mutual support, but they all hastily scatter to be alone with their grief. Everything shuts down after the evacuation announcement comes through, and Lyra hollowly walks away from it all. 

She feels like she’s falling, and all she wants is to hit the ground so that the grief that’s tightened around her will shatter and end. 

Jyn failed in getting the plans. There's no other explanation, no reason other than that to explain the Death Star hovering above the base.

Jyn is gone.

Lyra finds an isolated passage of the cave they’re currently exploring, and _howls_.

She bashes her fists repeatedly into the icy wall, tries to work out the manic anger that seizes her again and again because she wasn’t there for Jyn when she needed her most. All it serves is to bloody her knuckles and take some of the air out of her lungs, but at least she’s feeling _something_.

Jyn’s gone, and Lyra refuses to think on that any longer than she has to. Her brave, reckless, extraordinary girl had staged a small rebellion in order to make a desperate grab at peace no matter the outcome. Lyra’s never been more proud in her life, but at the same time would trade all the pride in the galaxy to just have Jyn back in her arms.

It’s like her worst nightmare come true, she’s all alone in a galaxy that no longer has Jyn and Galen in it. Something is pressing in on her, and her knees threaten to buckle underneath her-she wants to plant her feet and refuse to fall, while at the same time a small part of her is hoping the ground will open up and swallow her.

Her feet move without her fully registering it, but moving is better than standing still and letting the grief knock her down. If she moves she can move with it, learn to carry it alongside her. It’s another way to try to work it out, for the tears are stuck behind her eyes and refuse to fall. 

It’s awful, it’s horrible, it’s hell, and she just wants to scream for all she’s worth until this weight that has settled on her chest finally cracks and she can bleed freely. It’s a pulsing thing, her grief, and it’s being held back by little more than years of practice. It’s hitting the back of her sternum, so hard it’ll become permanently tattooed onto her-she’ll never move around without her grief coming with her, Lyra knows. This moment on Hoth firmly divides her life into a before and after-her life with Jyn firmly placed there, and an after where that's no longer possible.

She keeps pacing the cave, because standing still at this point is not an option-if she stops moving she’ll think too much, and if she thinks too much she’ll fall into a despair she won't be able to climb out of. Rattling around in her bones is this heaviness that would see her rooted to the ground, keep her stuck in this spot on some frozen planet for the rest of existence.

There’s not enough space to move around in, she doesn’t have the space to outrun her grief. She has to process it all in a cave on some remote ice planet too far away from her daughter. If Lyra believed in hell, she knew this is what it would be. To be deprived of all that she lived for, and to be trapped in a space that feels so confining she could dig for days and still only hit a wall.

It's too much, too much right now, and all Lyra wants to do is get on the ship and fly out into the expansiveness of the galaxy, and never come back.

-

Across the galaxy, Rogue One wakes up in Yavin 4’s medbay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> as always, comments are appreciated, though never required :)


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's hard to believe that this story is coming to a close, after three years of writing and fretting.
> 
> Thank you all for joining me on this journey.
> 
> As always, any and all mistakes are my own.
> 
> Enjoy.

The caves of Hoth are silent when the call comes in. Only a series of beeps from the radio alerts them to the incoming transmissions, but it's enough to spark life back into the team.

From where she is Lyra can hear yelling as her team scrambles back to the main radio, and she rushes to join them. The beeps continue for several more minutes, her team clutching at each other as they await the inevitable message.

" **Attention-Attention: The Scatter Call has been reversed. Rebel forces have defeated the Empire's forces at Yavin 4. Base is secure-I repeat-Base is secure.** "

Lyra nearly trips on herself trying to turn up the volume on the radio. One of her team members grabs her by the elbow and props her up against their hip, keeping an arm around her to help her stand upright. Lyra thanks them halfheartedly, her mind solely focused on the message.

The base is secure, yes.

But her Jyn is still gone.

-

The ride back to Yavin 4 is mainly silent, punctuated every so often by breathless laughter that expresses the disbelief at the survival of their fight. Lyra stares out the window and pushes away her food. She can tell her team is concerned, but she can't speak about it. She thinks she'll never be able to.

-

Across the galaxy, Galen Erso wakes up in Yavin 4’s medbay.

\- 

Lyra stumbles down the ramp, the joy of the base roaring past her as she flees to the comfort of her bunk. A hand on her shoulder stops her, and she makes to toss the hand off when she sees who it's attached to.

Mon Mothma looks as regal as ever in her white, made all the more so by the glow of victory that seems to shine from within. 

Lyra finds herself loathing the sight of it. Her contempt must be plain to see, as Mothma's characteristically calm facade cracks to show creases around the eyes.

"I would have thought a defeat of this magnitude would make you happy, Lyra."

"Not when I know what it cost."

Mothma looks at her with a confused expression, before what looks like understanding dawns on her face.

"Come with me." The tone of her voice does not leave room for argument.

That doesn't mean Lyra isn't of half a mind to ignore her, to throw her gear to the ground and storm off into the jungle. But there's something in Mothma's eyes that sets her on alert, blood and bone humming.

Lyra only nods before following Mothma out of the hangar. Mothma leads her down several halls Lyra does not register, only realizing they are at the medbay when the doors glide open in front of her.

Revealing Jyn. Alive and well, looking at Lyra with enough light in her eyes to outshine a supernova.

Lyra collapses.

-

The time after she is reunited with Jyn is a blur, only scrambling limbs and whispered prayers marking the moments between breaths. She has Jyn in her arms again-nothing else matters. 

When she can she sits down with the team, Rogue One, they call themselves, and listens to their story. She finds out that Cassian shot Krennic before he could hurt Jyn. Lyra only wishes she had been the one to pull the trigger. Part of her wants to shiver at this thought, but the other part of her lets the vindictiveness in-it makes it easier to channel her anger, to focus it on the one man who nearly ruined her life more times than she’s willing to count. To have seen it through till the end would have been a relief, to know this man could no longer physically haunt the world she’s living. But she will take what she can, for Jyn is with her again.

She's meeting the young pilot when she feels a tap against her shoulder.

"Lyra, there's something I have to tell you," she turns to see Cassian giving her a concerned look. "Galen's alive. He's here, he's on base."

The shock renders her silent, her eyes searching his face for any sign of falsehood. But Cassian's gaze is firm. 

Lyra gulps in several breaths, Jyn taking her hand and squeezing in an attempt at comfort.

"Wh-where is he?"

"He went to the hangar, mama. I think he meant to meet you there." Lyra looks to her daughter, wonders how so much has happened and how so much has changed since they last saw each other.

"Well, we'll certainly have some things to discuss later, won't we?" She tries for humor, only succeeding when Jyn gives her a watery smile.

"Go to him." 

Lyra hugs her again, and sprints out the door.

-

She spies him across the hangar. She'd know his back anywhere, even after all these years. It was the last image she has of him in her mind, and now it's in front of her again. His hair is much shorter, grey streaking through. She reaches a hand towards her own hair, regretting the years they have been prevented from spending together.

She wonders if he'll recognize her. She barely recognizes herself, the Lyra Erso she was with him a blur in the past.

She's afraid. She can feel her pulse pounding, the uncertainty about the man who was her husband. The uncertainty about herself, of what she'll do when their eyes meet.

He hasn’t noticed her yet, too much movement separates them. She sees him turn ever so slightly, and though she hates herself for it, she turns on her heels and walks away. The one thing she never thought she’d need when it came to him was time, and she still can’t seem to accept that the galaxy has finally given her another kindness by sending her Galen. 

She has Jyn, and now Galen is within her atmosphere again, and she can’t deal with it all in front of half the rebellion.

She misses the gesture made in her direction by the soldier speaking to Galen, misses the widening of his eyes as he takes in her retreating form. Misses the way he breathes her name and goes to follow her, only to be blocked by a group of techs scrambling to get everything to rights. By the time they’ve passed, she’s out of his sight and Galen has to confirm both with himself and the soldier he hadn’t simply seen what he wanted to see. His arms ache as the memories of holding her rush through his veins, and it is only with the promise that he can go to her immediately following his briefing that Galen Erso goes in the opposite direction of his wife.

-

A sharp knock on her door is all she has for warning before her husband bursts into her room. He pauses the instant he sees her, as though he hasn’t thought about this moment. As though he has never considered that one day they’d be reunited, and that the time they lost would blow away as they took in the sight of each other after fourteen years spent on opposite sides of the galaxy.

“Hello Galen,” Lyra says with a watery smile, “It’s been too long.” They’re not the right words, but anything else that she could have said still wouldn’t be enough to express what she truly feels. 

Was it possible for someone’s heart to be felt by another-could Galen feel her’s reaching out in a hesitant, loving hello?

_I’ve missed you. You came back to me._

Words that she felt she could shout from the top of the base fall away as she looks at him, sees him in all his weariness, finally in front of her after fourteen long, long years. A shadow passes across his face, as though he’s still trying to convince himself that his wife is actually standing before him, and it’s not just his grief showing him what he wants to see.

She’s not sure which one of them moves first, but suddenly she and Galen are so tightly wrapped around each other she knows nothing will tear them apart. Even when she has to inevitably let go she will hold onto this man for the rest of her life, feel the scratchiness of the shirt he’s wearing, the thrum of his heartbeat against her cheek, the scrape of his unshaven face against her brow. This moment with him will become etched into her bones, something she’ll carry around with her for the rest of her life.

_I love you. Welcome home._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has read this story, left a comment, dropped off a kudo. 
> 
> This was the first fic I ever started writing, and now here we are. Your support has meant the world.
> 
> For old times sake, I'll write this again: comments are, as always, appreciated though never required.
> 
> Many thanks for reading :)


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